Monday, December 21, 2009

The Forever War

Well, it's not really forever. That's a title I swiped from a science-fiction author, Joe Haldeman, I think, who wrote a book by that title. Never read the book, but the title sure sticks with you.

No, it's not a "forever" war, but it sure feels like it. I certainly expect it to last until Jesus comes back, and God knows it's been going on all my life, and as far as I can tell, from earliest history.

To what do I refer, you ask?

I refer to the continual conflict between Leviathan and Lex, Rex, to the conflict between those who think--or at least act--as though the state is some sort of god, that it has, by right, all power to anything and everything that it wills, that the only way for men to live in peace is to give up all power to the state, and those who think that man has certain rights (this idea is best founded upon the idea that those rights are God-given) that the state is not only bound to respect, but to defend, the defense of man's rights being its purpose for existence. In this world, there are countless people who don't quite understand the conflict that rages 'round them, who can't quite grasp that there have always been, will always be (until the aforementioned return) people who will connive, steal, lie, cheat, extort, threaten, and murder to control the machinery of the state so as to benefit themselves or to imagine themselves godlike; and people who make it their business to resist that arrogant usurpation of power, who insist that the state is not entitled to the sort of fealty that should be reserved for deity, that it has a limited role. The mass of men don't understand that though both those groups of people claim to be speaking and acting on behalf of "the people," the first group are nothing but predators, lying through their teeth with every word they utter, simply trying to fool enough people to allow them to retain the power they abuse. Because the mass of men do not understand, because they want to believe the high-sounding words by which they are enslaved, or at least that those who utter them really mean them, they are perpetually shocked at the abuses of natural law that are perpetrated against them.

Right now, with the Senate vote for cloture on a "health care" bill--a "health care" bill that is nothing of the kind, a "health care" bill that, given the precedents we have in Medicare and Medicaid, will cost far more than projected and accomplish far less, a "health care" bill the constitutionality of which is highly questionable to say the least, a "health care" bill that is being jammed through in the name of "the American people" despite polling that consistently shows that a substantial and growing majority of Americans do not want it, a "health care" bill that is, in fine, nothing more than a blatant attempt to grab and to consolidate raw power--it seems that those who worship at the altar of Leviathan are in the ascendancy. Maybe they are. But one thing I know: those of us who prefer liberty and justice to plunder and dependency are not going away, and wherever we can, by whatever means we can, we are going to hinder the statists' agenda. We are going to do our best to ensure that more and more men understand that the statists do not give a flying fig about their "general welfare," that they care only about controlling the people in whose name they claim to act. And eventually, I think and I hope, the pendulum of history will swing back our way.And no, for the inevitable leftist blogger who sees things in statements that simply are not there, "by whatever means we can" is not advocating armed revolution.